BNY Tests 24/7 Treasury Settlement With RLUSD and OpenEden, Eyes Tokenized Treasuries by Year-End

The world's largest custody bank completed an after-hours Treasury trade using Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin reserves, confirming the settlement infrastructure stablecoins need already exists at BNY.

BNY, the world's largest custody bank, plans to support round-the-clock settlement of conventional and tokenized U.S. Treasuries by 2027, after completing an after-hours trade involving reserves from two stablecoin issuers. According to a July 23, 2026 report by CoinDesk citing a client letter from BNY, the bank will test tokenized Treasuries on a private blockchain by the end of 2026 and extend its settlement network to cover more Asian, European, and U.S. trading hours this year.

The completed transaction involved Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin and OpenEden's USDO stablecoin, with Ripple participating directly while BNY's cash-management unit Dreyfus acted on behalf of OpenEden. Tradeweb handled the trade after Fedwire Securities had stopped processing secondary-market Treasury transfers for the day. BNY said the transaction settled through existing cash rails shortly after the trade.

The securities were not tokenized; the test demonstrated that Treasury activity tied to stablecoin reserves could continue after the main U.S. settlement window closed. This addresses a structural gap: RLUSD and USDO hold short-dated government debt as reserve assets and trade continuously, but the Treasuries behind them remain tied to weekday settlement windows—delaying reserve adjustments following large creations, redemptions, or collateral calls.

Why This Matters for Stablecoin Infrastructure

BNY is already the primary custodian for RLUSD's reserves. The bank introduced tokenized deposit balances in January 2026, giving institutional clients an on-chain representation of commercial-bank money. The after-hours settlement test represents the next step: extending that infrastructure to cover the time gaps where stablecoin demand and Treasury supply are chronologically misaligned.

The practical implication is significant. Large stablecoin issuers must manage reserve portfolios continuously to match market creation and redemption flows, but Treasury settlement infrastructure closes each business day at a fixed time. When BNY achieves 24/7 Treasury settlement, it resolves one of the structural constraints limiting stablecoin scalability at the institutional level.

Tokenized Treasuries Pilot by End of 2026

Beyond the operational extension, BNY plans to begin testing tokenized Treasuries on a private blockchain by year-end 2026. This would create on-chain representations of government debt that can settle, transfer, and serve as collateral around the clock without requiring the legacy Fedwire window.

The timeline aligns with a broader wave of institutional infrastructure being built around tokenized sovereign debt. Citi has projected tokenized securities growing to roughly $5.5 trillion by 2030, and Boston Consulting Group and Ripple have estimated tokenized assets across all asset classes reaching $18.9 trillion by 2033, according to the CoinDesk report.